A 1984 arcade platformer with action RPG elements, Dragon Buster is notable as the first game to feature a double jump. It was also one of the first games to include a life meter (along with Flash Boy and Punch-Out), known as vitality in this game. The game featured side-scrolling platform gameplay and a hub "world view" map similar to the later Super Mario Bros. series. It also featured hack & slash combat, like the later Tritorn and Legend of Zelda series. Dragon Buster was developed and published by Namco. The game is a side-scrolling dungeon crawler, where the goal of the game is for the hero, Clovis, to rescue Princess Celia. Dragon Buster was later ported to a variety of home consoles, notably the Nintendo Entertainment System and the MSX. It runs on Namco Pac-Land hardware, modified to support vertical scrolling
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It's not a good game. Honestly, I don't know if there's anything good about Dragon Buster. The gameplay is terrible. If the rooms of enemies you have to fight through don't just simply decide you lose and bounce Clovis (yes, that's his name) around like a tennis ball, you still have to contend with some of the clunkiest feeling controls I've ever had the pleasure to play with, and not in a meaningful way either. It is a difficult ordeal to jump forward in this game. If you hate Ice Climber for having "bad jumping physics" you haven't seen anything! Eat your heart out!
Dragon Buster's presentation is an unbelievably bad output from Namco in this era, too. I don't get why the game looks and sounds like it this. This game uses the Pac Land engine! A game that looks nice!
Look at how Clovis's sprite looks!
Listen to how the music sounds!
What the hell happened?!
To apply some sort of thesis to all this, maybe Gamers shouldn't apply so much importance to being a pioneer. These games command a certain deal of a respect-- don't get me wrong! But being the first does not a good game make, y'know? It's more complicated than that. That's what makes the craftmanship of better "firsts" than this game awe inspiring.
Still, I don't hate this game. I think action platformers with RPG elements are just my comfort food. If I was there
in 1984 era Japan I would've ate Dragon Buster up. And truthfully, this game has one good thing:
it is really awesome that you can turn the princess that you save into a bunnygirl if you play it long enough. They really had hot stuff in '84 with her and Ki from Tower of Druaga, huh?
(And by the way, that game clears the shit out of this.)
